Raft starts you in the middle of the ocean on a 2×2 raft: four wood-and-plastic tiles and a plastic hook, with open water in every direction. There’s no land to gather from, so nearly everything you build starts as debris you hook out of the water as it drifts past.
This guide breaks the opening hours of Raft into focused walkthroughs, each covering one part of getting established: surviving your first hour, steering the raft, keeping fed and watered, unlocking the tech tree, harvesting islands, and smelting your first metal.
Surviving your first hour
Hook flotsam, craft the Building Hammer, expand the raft wide, and learn to read the current, all while keeping the shark from chewing up your foundations.
Steering: the Sail and dodging islands
Why you avoid small islands early, how to get unstuck with a Paddle, and how to build your first real directional control with the Sail and Streamer.
Food, water, and storage
Beat hunger with the Simple Grill, turn seawater into drinking water with the Simple Purifier, and clear a jammed inventory with Small Storage.
The Research Table and Collection Nets
Unlock the tech tree, then automate flotsam collection with nets, the single biggest quality-of-life jump in the early game.
Harvesting islands for scrap and ore
Anchor safely away from the shark, dive for metal ore, copper, clay, and sand, and solve the scrap shortage that stalls your net production.
Bricks and the Smelter
Turn clay and sand into bricks, build a Smelter, and refine ore into metal and copper ingots (glass comes from sand, not ore).
